I find it interesting that NASA has deliberately destroyed probes to prevent contamination of some of Jupiter's moons with possible earth life and organic compounds while this group is hell bent or spreading it anywhere they can get a ride to. Interesting differences in opinion.

I find it interesting that NASA has deliberately destroyed probes to prevent contamination of some of Jupiter's moons with possible earth life and organic compounds while this group is hell bent or spreading it anywhere they can get a ride to. Interesting differences in opinion.

tc

The Moon is rather more inhospitable (than something like Europa or Titan), on account of the no-atmosphere thing. And the direct exposure to solar radiation enabled by the no-atmosphere. And not having a subsurface ocean where life may thrive despite lacking an atmosphere.

Also, it's not like SpaceIL intentionally crashed their probe into the Moon, a soft landing was the plan. Things did not go according to plan.

I find it interesting that NASA has deliberately destroyed probes to prevent contamination of some of Jupiter's moons with possible earth life and organic compounds while this group is hell bent or spreading it anywhere they can get a ride to. Interesting differences in opinion.

tc

The Moon is rather more inhospitable (than something like Europa or Titan), on account of the no-atmosphere thing. And the direct exposure to solar radiation enabled by the no-atmosphere. And not having a subsurface ocean where life may thrive despite lacking an atmosphere.

Also, it's not like SpaceIL intentionally crashed their probe into the Moon, a soft landing was the plan. Things did not go according to plan.

How would a soft landing be better than a hard one from the point of view of contamination?

I find it interesting that NASA has deliberately destroyed probes to prevent contamination of some of Jupiter's moons with possible earth life and organic compounds while this group is hell bent or spreading it anywhere they can get a ride to. Interesting differences in opinion.

tc

The Moon is rather more inhospitable (than something like Europa or Titan), on account of the no-atmosphere thing. And the direct exposure to solar radiation enabled by the no-atmosphere. And not having a subsurface ocean where life may thrive despite lacking an atmosphere.

Also, it's not like SpaceIL intentionally crashed their probe into the Moon, a soft landing was the plan. Things did not go according to plan.

How would a soft landing be better than a hard one from the point of view of contamination?

The multi storage device concept is quite helpful. I've often thought aviation should adapt it and place recording chips in hundreds of places on the aircraft (in addition to the black box!). That way much of the flight and cockpit data will likely be available with the random bits of wreckage that often seen in aviation disasters.

I find it interesting that NASA has deliberately destroyed probes to prevent contamination of some of Jupiter's moons with possible earth life and organic compounds while this group is hell bent or spreading it anywhere they can get a ride to. Interesting differences in opinion.

tc

The moon is specifically classified as lifeless which is why no one had a problem with this.

To everyone complaining about the horrible contamination of the Moon: people walked there, remember? You think that they didn't leave behind anything containing bacteria or whatnot? They left behind bags filled with poop, I'm pretty sure those had some living entities in them.

There goes a sterile environment I. The moon. Now any bacteria we find we have to wonder if it was transplanted by these nutjobs ..

Sterilization of the Lunar landers wasn't exactly high priority during Apollo. Return trip sterilization, certainly, but leaving stuff behind on the Lunar surface was kind of a thing. Stuff that ABSOLUTELY has bacteria and probably a few species of virus and fungi.

But at the same time, there is a 0.0 chance that any contamination of the Lunar surface by active bacteria can occur. No free water, no metabolism. No metabolism, no mitosis. No mitosis, no spread of contamination.

To everyone complaining about the horrible contamination of the Moon: people walked there, remember? You think that they didn't leave behind anything containing bacteria or whatnot? They left behind bags filled with poop, I'm pretty sure those had some living entities in them.

....and you just gave the Apple Team a new idea to improve their poop emoji

There goes a sterile environment I. The moon. Now any bacteria we find we have to wonder if it was transplanted by these nutjobs ..

Sterilization of the Lunar landers wasn't exactly high priority during Apollo. Return trip sterilization, certainly, but leaving stuff behind on the Lunar surface was kind of a thing. Stuff that ABSOLUTELY has bacteria and probably a few species of virus and fungi.

But at the same time, there is a 0.0 chance that any contamination of the Lunar surface by active bacteria can occur. No free water, no metabolism. No metabolism, no mitosis. No mitosis, no spread of contamination.

Ninja'd twice.

Wait, so was the main concern that the astronauts would accidentally bring moon life back to earth, on the off chance there actually was life on the moon?

There goes a sterile environment I. The moon. Now any bacteria we find we have to wonder if it was transplanted by these nutjobs ..

Sterilization of the Lunar landers wasn't exactly high priority during Apollo. Return trip sterilization, certainly, but leaving stuff behind on the Lunar surface was kind of a thing. Stuff that ABSOLUTELY has bacteria and probably a few species of virus and fungi.

But at the same time, there is a 0.0 chance that any contamination of the Lunar surface by active bacteria can occur. No free water, no metabolism. No metabolism, no mitosis. No mitosis, no spread of contamination.

Ninja'd twice.

Wait, so was the main concern that the astronauts would accidentally bring moon life back to earth, on the off chance there actually was life on the moon?

I find it interesting that NASA has deliberately destroyed probes to prevent contamination of some of Jupiter's moons with possible earth life and organic compounds while this group is hell bent or spreading it anywhere they can get a ride to. Interesting differences in opinion.

There goes a sterile environment I. The moon. Now any bacteria we find we have to wonder if it was transplanted by these nutjobs ..

Sterilization of the Lunar landers wasn't exactly high priority during Apollo. Return trip sterilization, certainly, but leaving stuff behind on the Lunar surface was kind of a thing. Stuff that ABSOLUTELY has bacteria and probably a few species of virus and fungi.

But at the same time, there is a 0.0 chance that any contamination of the Lunar surface by active bacteria can occur. No free water, no metabolism. No metabolism, no mitosis. No mitosis, no spread of contamination.

Ninja'd twice.

They landed in the OCEAN. That was the experimental equivalent of placing potential unknown organisms into a petri dish and putting that into an unsupervised incubator that vents to the outside world. And they did that half a dozen times - only ONE of which didn't have any moon-critters of any kind to bring back.

Remember, they had to decompress the LEM to egress. There were no locks on it in which some kind of decontamination could be carried out. And the astronauts all were exposed to moon-dust after their excursions outside (it clung to their suits like mad, according to the reports). It's entirely feasible for a lot of that to have gone back into the command module and returned to Earth as contamination. In fact, it almost certainly happened.

Seems to me they had a few folks point that out over the years.

Granted, there's no KNOWN life on the Moon, but would we have detected something like these tardigrades from Earth before going there? If there IS life on the moon, it's more likely to be facing the Earth since the other side has received a lot more bombardments due to it always facing away from the Earth. And all of the Apollo landings were on the Earth-facing side.

So, dropping Apollo capsules into the ocean was probably not a great idea from a "sterilization" point of view.

I find it interesting that NASA has deliberately destroyed probes to prevent contamination of some of Jupiter's moons with possible earth life and organic compounds while this group is hell bent or spreading it anywhere they can get a ride to. Interesting differences in opinion.

tc

The moon is specifically classified as lifeless which is why no one had a problem with this.

Not anymore, apparently

We aren't talking about terran bacteria, we're talking about a lifeform known for its ability to survive even the vacuum of space.

There goes a sterile environment I. The moon. Now any bacteria we find we have to wonder if it was transplanted by these nutjobs ..

Sterilization of the Lunar landers wasn't exactly high priority during Apollo. Return trip sterilization, certainly, but leaving stuff behind on the Lunar surface was kind of a thing. Stuff that ABSOLUTELY has bacteria and probably a few species of virus and fungi.

But at the same time, there is a 0.0 chance that any contamination of the Lunar surface by active bacteria can occur. No free water, no metabolism. No metabolism, no mitosis. No mitosis, no spread of contamination.

Ninja'd twice.

They landed in the OCEAN. That was the experimental equivalent of placing potential unknown organisms into a petri dish and putting that into an unsupervised incubator that vents to the outside world. And they did that half a dozen times - only ONE of which didn't have any moon-critters of any kind to bring back.

Remember, they had to decompress the LEM to egress. There were no locks on it in which some kind of decontamination could be carried out. And the astronauts all were exposed to moon-dust after their excursions outside (it clung to their suits like mad, according to the reports). It's entirely feasible for a lot of that to have gone back into the command module and returned to Earth as contamination. In fact, it almost certainly happened.

Seems to me they had a few folks point that out over the years.

Granted, there's no KNOWN life on the Moon, but would we have detected something like these tardigrades from Earth before going there? If there IS life on the moon, it's more likely to be facing the Earth since the other side has received a lot more bombardments due to it always facing away from the Earth. And all of the Apollo landings were on the Earth-facing side.

So, dropping Apollo capsules into the ocean was probably not a great idea from a "sterilization" point of view.

No arguments from me, the sterilization efforts on the return were laughable, but it was expected that reentry would burn anything off the exterior of the capsule. Capsule interior space bacteria, if any, would be dealt with by quarantine of the astronauts for long enough that if they were going to get sick they wouldn't spread it around Earth.

The divers who opened the capsule were quarantined, not for as long, not as strenuously, and not where anyone could actually see, and the capsule itself was resealed after the astronauts were removed, and not reopened again until in a 1960's clean-room.

Again, laughable efforts, but ones they HAD to take into account. At the time, even though NASA KNEW that there wasn't any chance of space bacteria, they still had to take the precaution, because everyone knew that if they were wrong, even a little bit, it would be smallpox-in-the-New World bad.

There goes a sterile environment I. The moon. Now any bacteria we find we have to wonder if it was transplanted by these nutjobs ..

Sterilization of the Lunar landers wasn't exactly high priority during Apollo. Return trip sterilization, certainly, but leaving stuff behind on the Lunar surface was kind of a thing. Stuff that ABSOLUTELY has bacteria and probably a few species of virus and fungi.

But at the same time, there is a 0.0 chance that any contamination of the Lunar surface by active bacteria can occur. No free water, no metabolism. No metabolism, no mitosis. No mitosis, no spread of contamination.

Ninja'd twice.

They landed in the OCEAN. That was the experimental equivalent of placing potential unknown organisms into a petri dish and putting that into an unsupervised incubator that vents to the outside world. And they did that half a dozen times - only ONE of which didn't have any moon-critters of any kind to bring back.

Remember, they had to decompress the LEM to egress. There were no locks on it in which some kind of decontamination could be carried out. And the astronauts all were exposed to moon-dust after their excursions outside (it clung to their suits like mad, according to the reports). It's entirely feasible for a lot of that to have gone back into the command module and returned to Earth as contamination. In fact, it almost certainly happened.

Seems to me they had a few folks point that out over the years.

Granted, there's no KNOWN life on the Moon, but would we have detected something like these tardigrades from Earth before going there? If there IS life on the moon, it's more likely to be facing the Earth since the other side has received a lot more bombardments due to it always facing away from the Earth. And all of the Apollo landings were on the Earth-facing side.

So, dropping Apollo capsules into the ocean was probably not a great idea from a "sterilization" point of view.

because everyone knew that if they were wrong, even a little bit, it would be smallpox-in-the-New World bad.

It wouldn't, though, for the same reason that we don't see any new branches of life spontaneously generating today. This is a planet full of very hungry organisms. If something can be eaten, it is eaten. Any weird space bacteria would have lived just long enough to be devoured by plain old normal Earth bacteria.

Thanks to cosmic radiation, the tardies will simulataneously grow to the size of trucks whilst evolving biorockets in their rears and poison dart guns in their faces. Then, Khan like, they will return to Earth to avenge their cold desolate Lunar imprisonment.